


New World Order

by nostalgia



Category: Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, EDAs, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Time - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 10:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17640836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgia/pseuds/nostalgia
Summary: Anji Kapoor is insane.Possibly.





	New World Order

The woman rocks back and forth, the words that spill from her lips running together into endless, mindless babble. This is the Prophet of Time. Her words are events that will come to pass.

Sabbath makes sure that the doctors treat her well. He’s trapped now, just like the Prophet, and her visions of the future pay enough to keep her in relative comfort. He drops by every morning to ask about her dreams, scratching away at her secrets to sell them on to the curious and the rich. 

On Wednesdays and Saturdays, Fitz drops by for a few hours. Not, of course, that he remembers anything about her, but he talks about his job at the chemical factory, humours Sabbath’s conviction that communication is the key. 

In her lucid moments, Anji is adamant that Sabbath is the enemy, that he is not to be trusted. Fitz just shrugs, because the past doesn’t matter anymore.

“He made this happen,” she whispers, paranoid. “Time collapsed because of him. This isn’t the real world, Fitz, none of us should be here.”

They keep the box in her room, because she seems a lot calmer when it’s near. It sits in the corner, and Anji sings to it; strange songs in languages that never existed. 

Every time she wakes into the outside world, her first words are the same: “Where’s the Doctor?” Anji remembers far too much, remembers everything that never was. But she’s forgotten what happened in the final battle, when the paradox was resolved and the Universe was saved. The Time Lords never were, and Fitz could never have seen Gallifrey destroyed. Gallifrey never was. 

Sabbath thinks he knows what’s wrong with her, he’s picked up enough from her streams of nonsense to know that everything she says is true somewhere. It’s luck when she sees the future of the real world, and most of the time she sees the world that used to be. Anji remembers a world where you could travel in time, which is nonsense, as everyone knows. He lets the doctors believe that she is mad, because it seems easier for everyone. He tells Fitz that he knows nothing. 

They tried to open Anji’s box once, and she screamed and screamed and threw herself around the room. It had to stay closed, she’d said, because that way it might still contain the things it should. 

Sabbath used parts salvaged from the Jonah to prod at the fabric of time. Now, it seems, is all there is. They are trapped in the moment, and must move slowly onwards day after day after slowly-passing day. Anji’s visions are the only glimpse into the future offered by this reconstructed Universe, and the Jonah will be anchored here forever. He still looks in books and myths to find the Doctor, the man who never was. Anji’s hints are useless, and he knows that chasing ghosts is a waste of his time. But Time is all they have, and it may as well be used. 

Between dead ends they like to help out. Fitz finds that this comes naturally, not like instinct but as muscle-reaction. A past-life memory of some sort, most likely, and he keeps meaning to ask someone about it. But he finds that he fits easily into the role of side-kick. He could have been born for the job (or re-born, maybe…), and feels at home playing anchor to Sabbath’s otherworld eccentricity. 

Eventually, Sabbath will fix Anji, cure Time, and everything will be back the way it should be. Fitz has faith in the man. (If Sabbath truly is a man. There is reason enough to doubt.) Anji has that strange fear of her benefactor, but Anji is, after all, insane. But everything will work out, because Sabbath has set his mind to the task – Sabbath, who saves the world, fights the oppressors, and is utterly, undoubtedly, unstoppable. He’s going to put everything to rights; it’s what he does best. 

All it’s going to take is Time.


End file.
